The complexity of silly apes

Well, I just had to add this monkey-related post. This is about The Daily Ape Show. The series of short animation films introducing Finland was made for Shanghai World EXPO 2010. Is this today’s version of the film Finlandia? I don’t know should I laugh or what? Do you? Click here to check the first episode!

I saw the first episode almost two months ago in Finnish TV channel YLE1. It got my attention, something new on the screen. I took it as a nice animation, nice effort. But when end credits told it was made for the expo, I had quite mixed feelings.

International orientation is important, I get it. Some stereotypes need to be broken and fresh aspects are more than welcome. Combining animations with social media might work (the other ape uses Twitter, the show has group in Facebook and episodes in Youtube). Entertaining approach can be much more powerful than pure information. Apes are funny animals. Colorful visuals are eye-candy etc.

But apes? With silly stories? And the “jungle-meets-city” looking background? I didn’t laugh during the first time I saw the show. What I remembered afterwards was just apes and singing fishes. It is more than nothing, but is it enough to get you interested enough to for example check tweets of a Finnish animation ape?

It’s great to see different approach to Finland, but still there is some complexity. I don’t know. Have I just lost my sense of humor?

Turbulent journey starting with Finlandia

I know. It is not that surprising to pick the own country of origin to be the context of this blog. But, there is a reason. I am interested of the topic, seriously. Besides the national focus needs to be supported by worldwide frame, right?

With no idea where to start, I decided to grab a book. A quick look at the history events concluded the twentieth century as a turbulent journey for Finland. Being province of Russian Empire, industrializing process, two major wars, war-indemnity obligations and days of pipeline industry seem to be somewhere far behind. Still, all these episodes have taken Finland towards the IT-driven information society and PR processes of today. 

Finnish PR campaigning can be seen started by “Finlandia”, the first propaganda film on Finland made in 1922. It was shown all over the world. According to researcher Jari Sedergren’s blog the estimated number of viewers is 6 million, which would make the film the most watched Finnish film over the times!

One of the exotic views in the film "Finlandia".

The whole idea of introducing a country in a film was something new worldwide. The distribution was supported by advertising in newspapers, arranging separate shows for press and elite and getting overall positive publicity. Such combination was quite modern at the time and amazing effort from a country in which PR concept was unknown for the first two decades of twentieth century. 

But what is the situation with Finnish PR nowadays? How did it develop to the forms of today? In this blog I try to find answers to these questions. So, here starts my turbulent journey.


Sources:

Lehtonen, J. (2004). “Finland.” In B. Van Ruler & D. Verčič, Public relations and communication management in Europe; a nation-by-nation introduction to public relations theory and practice (p.107-119). Berlin, Germany: Mouton de Gruyter.

http://sedis.blogspot.com/2008/03/finlandia-ulkoasiainministerin.html